As an organization, NCSE is focused on science education—and as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, it tries to stay out of politics as much as possible. With the recent Republican National Convention making headlines though, politics was definitely on my mind this week (and no doubt your mind too!)

David Baum, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, corresponded with NCSE staff about a challenge he and his colleagues faced. He shared this account of his experience trying to publish research which, in part, attempted to put certain creationist claims to the test.

Only 1 in 5 people in North America live in a place where they can see the Milky Way. That’s the staggering finding of a new paper in Science Advances, in which the authors painstakingly matched satellite images with ground measurements of light pollution around the world.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have been wondering where I disappeared to recently. Was I off on another maternity leave? Traveling the world? Silently moping in my office? Actually no, I’ve been working with our web developers on the new website you see here today.

How did I end up entangled with the website? Isn’t my specialty climate change? Well it is, but it turns out I have hidden skills—and one of them is working with websites. I owe it all to internships.

There are worse places to spend Independence Day than rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is an iconically American site, one full of American history and the spirit of independence and exploration. Native tribes believe that the first humans emerged from one of the springs that feed into the Canyon.

The big blue Institute for Creation Research logo at the top of the page stood out from all the other colorless, bland papers and letters. What the dickens was Duane Gish, ICR debater extraordinaire, writing about to Jack Friedman (right), NCSE board member and chair of the New York Council for Evolution Education?